Photo Retouching - - Need Help With Dark Image

cardmnal · #1 07-07-2006, 12:11 PM

During the summer, our shop specializes in white water rafting photo's. We have recently, by either camera malfunction or photographer malfunction, had a rash of dark images. We have customers that go on these river trips and come in later to buy the photo's of themselves. In this part of the business we like to say we sell faces and this is making it difficult.

Any help to make these look good would be greatly appreciated. I have tried many things but there seems to be a lack of color information within those shadows....that or I am missing something.

Any help would be greatly appreciated so I am saying thanks in advance.

Alan

rrustic · #2 07-07-2006, 12:30 PM

New levels adjustment layer.
Increased the lower slider a bit and decreased the upper slider a bit.
Added a dark mask and painted out all but the people.
Sharpened a little.
As I am a NOOB, thanks for the practice.

rrustic · #3 07-07-2006, 12:33 PM

Try again (Believe it was the size)

palomino · #4 07-07-2006, 01:06 PM

I did a curves adjustment, then a shadow/highlight adjustment. I also took down the saturation of the yellows in the skin and sharpened a little bit. That girl in the middle looks like she is in pain! Looks like fun to me! Good luck!

-Kate

Swampy · #5 07-07-2006, 01:14 PM

Photoshop Shadows adjustment. You could probably setup an action to batch process them if the necessary adjustment was similar photo to photo

Settings for shadows: 63-59-83
Color correction +3
Midtone contrast -7

Photo678 · #6 07-07-2006, 03:42 PM

Dodge tool.....selective color, color balance, contrast

Gary Richardson · #7 07-07-2006, 03:59 PM

Duplicate image.

Make copy layer active. Desaturate. Invert. Set layer blend mode to Soft Light. Reduce layer opacity to taste.

Finally applied layer mask and masked out all but the figures in the boat.

Duffy Pratt · #8 07-07-2006, 04:10 PM

I first copied the background layer, set to luminosity. I applied the green channel to the picture in normal mode. Then I applied the red channel to the green channel at 75% in lighten mode. Then I used a curve on the green channel only to pick up the mid-shadow range some. (All of the above on the copy layer).

Then converted to LAB. Did a minor shadow/highlight adjustment on the L channel (about 20% in the highlights, and 8% in the shadows, with radius and level at about 30 each). Then did a curve adjustment layer to steepen the slope of the A and B curves, to get better skin tone. Then had to lock down the oars, the skin, so I could bring the blue jackets and the red raft back to a reasonable saturation.

Applied USM to the L channel at 50, 18, 15. Converted back to sRGB and saved.

Duffy

Daviskw · #9 07-07-2006, 04:21 PM

Hi there

I used screen and a levels adjustment using the mask to brighten things up some. Then a little boost in saturation and reduced color noise with a color layer and a little gaussian blur.

Butch

solitear · #10 07-07-2006, 05:54 PM

Hi All,

Gosh these were all great I only jumped in because the picture looked so fun!

I selected dark areas using Cntl + Alt + ~ and set the blend to screen
Used Cntl + J to duplicate that layer
Then went Layers > Flatten Image
Then went Image > Mode > Lab and in my Layers palatte clicked Channels
Selected Lightness
Then went to Filters > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask to sharpen a little, clicked OK
Went to Image > Mode > RGB to return to my colored picture.......

Pretty basic but a fun one.

solitear · #11 07-07-2006, 06:02 PM

After I re-read your post I decided to give their faces a little more color....

cardmnal · #12 07-07-2006, 09:36 PM

Thanks everyone for pitching in. It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways there are to the same end in Photoshop. It is clear that everyone of you have made a drastic improvement on the original product.

I am curious, I never dabbled much in LAB color and am not sure of the advantages. Perhaps someone could explain the benefits of going that route.

Alan

Duffy Pratt · #13 07-07-2006, 10:17 PM

On LAB color, I recommend Dan Margulis book The Canyon Conundrum.

There are several things you can do in LAB that you can't do elsewhere. Steepening the A and B curves drives colors apart. You can also separate colors selectively by manipulating the curves. Conversely, lowering the slope of the A and B channel has the effect of driving colors together.

Next, the L channel contains only the contrast, so you can manipulate it without changing color. It is the best place to do shadow/highlights adjustments or general sharpening. It really makes a difference for these in highlights and deep shadows.

And for selective color changing, nothing works as well as LAB.

Next time you are in a good bookstore, you should see if they have the Margulis book and glance through the first couple of chapters. I had Elements until I did that. When I saw what LAB could do, I had to get the full Photoshop.

Duffy

cardmnal · #14 07-08-2006, 09:26 AM

Thank you Duffy. I will indeed pick up the Margulis book soon.

Duffy Pratt · #15 07-08-2006, 11:27 AM

For some reviews from here on the Margulis book, check:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/non-retouchpro-resources/11303-lab-book.html

and if you want some very interesting explanations, summaries and discussion, check:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18203

I found both of these yesterday while farting around. (Ever wonder why they call it surfing the web instead of farting around the web?)

Duffy